Sunday, February 10, 2008

Black History Month: More firsts!

E. Denise Simmons is the current mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts and is the first African-American (openly) lesbian mayor in the United States. The previous mayor, Kenneth Reeves, was the first openly gay African-American mayor in the United States.

Shirley Clarke Franklin (born May 10, 1945) is an American politician, a member of the Democratic Party, and, since January 7, 2002, the mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, a nonpartisan office. The 58th mayor of Atlanta, she was the first woman to hold the post and became the first black woman to be elected mayor of any major Southern city. Franklin is the fourth black mayor of Atlanta, the latest in a line of African American mayors that stretches back to 1974.

In 2002, Governor of Ohio Bob Taft ran for re-election but his lieutenant governor, Maureen O'Connor, ran for the Ohio Supreme Court. Taft replaced her with Jennette Bradley, a decision that sparked protests from his own party on the grounds Bradley was too liberal, having supported abortion and homosexual rights. The Taft-Bradley ticket easily defeated the Democratic challengers, Tim Hagan and Charleta Tavares and Bradley became Ohio's first African-American lieutenant governor and the first African-American woman to serve as Lt. Governor in the United States. (The 2002 election marked the first time that both candidates for lieutenant governor were black women.)